Download `Paradise Lost`: Reproduction, Gender, and Sexuality

Claremont Colleges
Scholarship @ Claremont
Scripps Senior Theses
Scripps Student Scholarship
2015
Queer 'Paradise Lost': Reproduction, Gender, and
Sexuality
Emily R. Kolpien
Scripps College
Recommended Citation
Kolpien, Emily R., "Queer 'Paradise Lost': Reproduction, Gender, and Sexuality" (2015). Scripps Senior Theses. Paper 657.
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/657
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QUEER PARADISE LOST: REPRODUCTION, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY
by
EMILY R. KOLPIEN
SUBMITTED TO SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS
PROFESSOR NICOSIA
PROFESSOR PEAVOY
24 APRIL 2015
2
Table of Contents
Title Page ........................................................................................................................... 1
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 3
Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 4
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Beginnings ........................................................................................................ 4
Feminist Milton ................................................................................................. 5
Milton’s Divorce Tracts and the “Querelle des Femmes” ................................ 7
Reading a Queer Paradise Lost ........................................................................ 8
Chapter One: Paradise Lost’s Queer Reproduction .................................................... 12
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Queered Reproduction in Paradise Lost......................................................... 12
Queer Angels .................................................................................................. 12
Infernal Procreation ........................................................................................ 14
The Creation of Sin ......................................................................................... 19
Chaotic Creation ............................................................................................. 21
Same-Sex Reproduction in Eden .................................................................... 23
Chapter Two: Sin ............................................................................................................ 27
I.
II.
III.
Sin’s Body ....................................................................................................... 27
Sin and Spenser’s “Errour” ............................................................................. 38
Sin’s Transgression of Choice ........................................................................ 41
Chapter Three: Eve ........................................................................................................ 44
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
Introduction ..................................................................................................... 44
Eve’s Queer Birth ........................................................................................... 44
Narcissistic Eve ............................................................................................... 46
Eve and Adam ................................................................................................. 54
Eve’s “Ruin” ................................................................................................... 55
Eve and Sin ..................................................................................................... 57
Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 61
Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 62
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Abstract
In the span of this thesis, I investigate the queer nature of John Milton’s epic
poem Paradise Lost, and argue that in spite of the biblical subject matter it is in fact a
text filled with instances of queer transgression. I focus on preexisting feminist critiques
of Milton in my introduction in order to ground myself within the academic field, and in
order to illustrate how I will be branching out from it. In my first chapter, I discuss the
queered nature of the poem’s landscapes, such as Chaos and Hell, and the specifically
queer and masculine nature of reproduction, such as Sin’s birth out of Satan’s head and
Eve’s birth from Adam’s rib. I then turn to an in-depth discussion of Sin in Chapter Two,
illustrating how she is punished with reproduction and sexual violence, and how this
contrasts with her queer birth while illustrating the poem’s problematic stance toward
fallen women. In my final chapter, I tackle the character of Eve, and argue that her
narcissistic scene at the lake after her birth reveals her queer sexual desire for her
feminine reflection. I also discuss how the poem sexualizes Sin and Eve, and how their
physical appearances illustrate the state of women in the poem. I finish by arguing that a
queer perspective of Milton is important because it allows modern critics to view as both
illuminating and empowering.
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Introduction
The king of glory in his powerful word
And spirit coming to create new worlds.
On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore
They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
And surging waves…. (7.208-214)
I. BEGINNINGS
When reading John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, it most likely is not readily
apparent that a story about the birth and fall of the quintessentially heterosexual couple
Adam and Eve is actually fraught with queerness. Yet as I will argue in the span of this
thesis, Milton’s language, characters, and scenes of reproduction are in fact inherently
queer. Apart from the scene in Book 8 where Raphael describes sex between angels to
Adam, I for the most part will not be using queer in terms of same-sex sexual and
romantic relationships. Instead, I want to articulate that the aspects of gender, sexuality,
and reproduction in the poem challenge normative binary thinking, an act that is in itself
queer, and is the definition for queer that I will use.
In Chapter One, I will discuss the queer scenes and sites of reproduction in the
poem, beginning as the poem does in Hell with its queered reproductive landscape and
Sin’s recollection of her narcissistic birth through primogeniture. I will then discuss
Chaos as “the womb of nature and perhaps her grave,” and the implications of both
Chaos and Hell being spaces where birth and death are simultaneously present and
possible, and why these paradoxes make these spaces queer. I will finish with Eve’s birth,
which I argue is queer because, like Sin, she is not given birth to normally by a woman,
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but instead she is famously created out of Adam’s rib, rendering Adam both her mother
and her lover and God both midwife and Father.
In Chapter Two, I will delve in-depth into Milton’s characterization of Sin, and
the way that her queer birth and her incestuous relationship with her father, which results
in painful and eternal childbirth and the radical transformation of her body, reveals the
poem’s commodifying and punitive treatment of its female characters and their bodies. I
will also argue that in spite of the poem’s notions of God’s predestination, Sin’s
transgressive behavior reveals that even in a space as misogynist as Paradise Lost, there
is queer and feminist potential through its female characters’ actions.
Finally, in Chapter Three I will tackle Eve, and although I will not be arguing
about whether or not she can be considered a feminist or misogynist character, I will
argue the fact that from her very birth she is a queer one. Paying particular attention to
her recollection of the lake scene in Book 3, I will discuss how the poem sets Eve up as a
queer and imperfect character from her birth and from her first appearance in the poem. I
will then compare her to Sin, for not only are they the sole female characters in the poem,
but the similarities and differences in their characters reveal that although Paradise Lost
is fraught with queer transgressive potential, ultimately its treatment of women and their
bodies reveals its sexism.
II. FEMINIST MILTON
Much work has been done surrounding feminist criticism of John Milton’s Paradise Lost,
from debates about whether Milton should be considered feminist or misogynistic, to
discussions of Eve’s place in the poem and how this ties into its debated misogyny.
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Critics from famous writers such as Virginia Woolf and Mary Wollstonecraft to modern
feminist critics argue that Eve’s submission to Adam reveals the poem’s undeniable
sexism, while other scholars argue that although the environment of the poem is a
misogynistic one, Eve is in fact a character who is able to undermine the gender hierarchy
of the text.
Yet in the span of feminist critiques of Paradise Lost, it is difficult to find
discussions on the queerness of the poem apart from Raphael’s description of angel sex in
Book 8.1 The poem, in spite of its conservative subject matter, challenges multiple
binaries and its characters and its language do not behave in ways that one would expect
in a poem about the biblical creation and fall of man. As other academics have discussed,
viewing Paradise Lost through a feminist lens reveals that it is neither entirely radical nor
sexist in nature.2 However, I will argue that critiquing it using modern notions of radical
queerness complicates the poem even further in addition to revealing new insights, for
Paradise Lost’s feminist, misogynist, and queer attributes are all tangled up amongst each
other. As I will illustrate through the course of my thesis, although the poem appears on
the surface to be heteronormative and conservative, it is in fact also full of queer
transgressive potential that complicates and illuminates its preexisting feminist criticisms.
The discussion of whether or not Paradise Lost can be considered feminist is an
important one, and the treatment and opinions of women during Milton’s time will be
discussed in the span of this introduction, but I would like to ground my analysis in the
paper proper in the poem itself. Throughout this introduction I will situate myself in
1
Neil Forsyth discusses the queerness of Hell in his article “Milton’s Womb,” and
2
See Elisabeth Liebert’s “Rendering ‘More Equal’: Eve’s Changing Discourse in
‘Paradise Lost,” Patrick J. McGrath’s “Formal Resistance: Gender Hierarchy and Eve’s
Final Speech in ‘Paradise Lost.’”
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feminist criticism of Milton in order to illustrate the ways that I will combine queer and
feminist theories with specific instances in the poem where I have found signs of
queerness and discursive womanhood. In this introduction I would like to examine the
implications of looking backward at the poem through modern feminist and queer studies
lenses, and the complicated tension between the poem’s undeniable misogyny and its
undercurrent of queerness.
III. MILTON’S DIVORCE TRACTS AND THE “QUERELLE DES FEMMES”
One cannot write about women and sexuality in Paradise Lost without examining
Milton’s own views towards women, and the state of women societally in the 1600s.
Although the poem itself is revealing of Milton’s attitudes towards women and marriage,
and lots of academic work has been done about this, his Divorce Tracts more explicitly
illustrate Milton’s complicated relationship with womanhood, so much of Milton
criticism has dealt with both the poem itself and with his external political writings on
divorce.3 As critics posit, the English Civil War going on in the 1600s politically drive
Milton’s representations of marriage both in his Divorce Tracts and in Paradise Lost.
Marriage, female sexuality, and female sexuality within marriage are all important
themes of Paradise Lost, which as Maria Magro argues are drawn from Milton’s political
ideals about male liberty depending upon the domestication and sexualization of women.4
Critics also argue that in writing Paradise Lost, Milton was influenced by debates about
3
See Maria Magro’s “Milton’s Sexualized Woman and the Creation of a Gendered
Public Sphere,” Melissa E. Sanchez’s Erotic Subjects, Elpseth Graham’s “’Vain
Desire,’ ‘Perverseness’ and ‘Love’s Proper Hue’: Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist
Interest in Paradise Lost.”
4
Magro 98
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women in early modern England, from the “Querelle des Femmes” of the seventeenthcentury to witchcraft.5 As many academics illustrate, Paradise Lost is a domestically
political text, where Milton uses marriage, sexuality, reproduction, and gender to make
sense of and argue about the complex politics going on at the time. Considering how
much has been written about this, one can argue that drawing links between the poem and
Milton’s relationship to debates about women is an important task. However, I would like
to focus on Paradise Lost as a singular text, and although Milton’s life has influenced a
lot of the feminist criticism about the poem, instead I would like to treat the poem as
formally separate from both Milton and the society in which he lived. In the next section
of the introduction I will be discussing more in-depth how I am bringing modern notions
of queer theory to the poem, and in doing so I intend to set up how in my chapters proper
I will focus in on the poem itself, using my modern knowledge of queer studies to view
the poem from a fresh perspective while still keeping in mind its historical position.
IV. READING A QUEER PARADISE LOST
Like the study of Paradise Lost, the study of queer theory in its entirety is too expansive
for me to adequately discuss in the short span of this introduction. So, I will be focusing
not on queer theory in terms of the lived realities of queer people, but instead how it has
been and can be used in reference to literature and its criticism.
5
See Shannon Miller’s “Serpentine Eve: Milton and the Seventeenth-Century Debate
over Women,” Alinda J. Sumers’ “Milton’s Mat(t)ereology: Paradise Lost and the
Seventeenth-Century ‘Querelle des Femmes,’” and Sara van den Berg’s “Eve, Sin, and
Witchcraft in Paradise Lost.”
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The word queer has had a number of definitions, from meaning strange or
eccentric,6 to being used as a slur against LGBTIQ people, to being reclaimed as an
umbrella term by the queer community, to finally being appropriated by the academic
community. With its complicated history, queer is an incredibly charged word, both in its
history as a slur and in that today it is not only used as an identifier, but also as a political
ideal. The definition of queer that I will be relying on is “A political statement, as well as
a sexual orientation, which advocates breaking binary thinking and seeing both sexual
orientation and gender identity as potentially fluid.”7 I will employ a definition not from
the Oxford English Dictionary or a scholarly text but from an online LGBTIQ resource
because I want to acknowledge that although this is an academic paper on a three
hundred year old epic poem based on the Bible, using modern political queer ideals to
discuss Paradise Lost will allow me to work within existing Milton criticism while also
allowing me to bring modern ideas of queerness to it. As I previously discussed, Milton
wrote Paradise Lost from a political perspective, so although in the year 2015 the poem
may not immediately have much political resonance, using the political definition of
queer reveals the link between the radical potential of queerness within both today’s
patriarchal society and in the patriarchal space of the poem.
Feminist critics of Paradise Lost have viewed it from multiple perspectives, from
it being an entirely and irreproachably patriarchal text,8 to, as I and other critics view it, a
text capable of simultaneously containing feminist transgressive potential and of being a
6
"queer, adj.1." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web.
7
"Definition of Terms." Gender Equity Resource Center. UC Berkeley Gender Equity
Resource Center, n.d. 8
See Christine Froula’s “When Eve Reads Milton: Undoing the Canonical Economy.”
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text entrenched in the patriarchy. Elisabeth Liebert articulates in Rendering "More
Equal": Eve's Changing Discourse in "Paradise Lost,"
In the case of Paradise Lost the text is complex enough to respond to the context
of both feminist and patriarchal readings and to supply argument and counterargument to both camps. This textual complicity suggests that it should be
possible to find a middle ground, a reading that acknowledges Eve as subordinate
and privileged simultaneously, at once liberated by Milton’s revision of tradition
and proscribed by the limitations of that revision.
Liebert is one critic of many who argue that Paradise Lost is neither entirely feminist
nor misogynist, and that as Liebert writes, within it “it should be possible to find a middle
ground.” I argue that this middle ground is where the poem’s queerness is located, for the
queer nature of the poem is intrinsic to its inability to conform to binaries, including those
such as feminist and misogynist, which so much of Milton criticism has focused on.
Before moving onto my analysis of the text itself, I would like to explicitly
ground myself in Milton criticism, and clearly illustrate my use of the word queer. I do
not exactly see Paradise Lost existing in a “middle ground” of feminism and patriarchy;
instead, I believe that it is a combination of both, and as I will argue it incorporates them
both through its treatment of reproduction, gender, and sexuality in such a way that
renders it simultaneously queer and sexist, radical and patriarchal. I began this chapter
with a quote from the poem, where Jesus, “the king of glory,” is about to create new
worlds from “the vast immeasurable abyss / Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.”
Although I will be dealing with God and Jesus very little, I feel that these lines
encapsulate what I am attempting to do in this thesis. Just as Paradise Lost is capable of
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being a text that is both feminist and sexist, so too is it a space where a vast
immeasurable abyss can be transformed into entirely new worlds; and where characters
such as Adam and Eve, and even Sin and Satan, that are usually thought of as engaging in
the hetero-patriarchy of the poem, can in fact be queer themselves and through their
behavior can illustrate the discursive queerness of the poem.
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Chapter One: Paradise Lost’s Queer Reproduction
I. QUEERED REPRODUCTION IN PARADISE LOST
In my introduction I discussed the definition of queer I will be using within my
thesis, but I would like to reiterate that although I will be using queer in the sense of
characters feeling non-normative sexual desire, I will also, and more importantly, be
employing it to describe the non-normative state of reproduction in the poem, which will
be the focus of this chapter. I am not focusing my argument in this chapter on the notion
that the poem’s characters are explicitly queer, but instead that their actions question the
binarism of the poem, in reference to sex, gender, and the forms of reproduction. In this
chapter, I will examine the queered nature of reproduction in the poem, from the physical
landscapes of Hell, Chaos, and Eden to the characters themselves, including Satan and his
daughter Sin, and Adam and Eve.
II. QUEER ANGELS
Much of queer criticism of Paradise Lost has focused on Raphael’s description of angel
sex in Book 8, so I will begin this introduction with a close albeit cursory reading of these
lines in order to ground myself in current queer discussions of the poem before branching
off into my own argument. Raphael says to Adam,
To whom the angel, with a smile that glowed
Celestial rosy red, Love's proper hue,
Answered. Let it suffice thee that thou knowest
Us happy, and without love no happiness.
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest,
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(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy
In eminence; and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars;
Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need,
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul. (8.620-9)
As Raphael describes, sex between angels transcends the sexual capabilities of humans,
both in its purity and in the fact that “Total they mix,” every part of them integrating into
with whom they have sex. Raphael describes sex between the angels as entirely
genderless, imbuing it with a sense of queerness because through sex, the angels are able
to transcend the gender binary. Many argue that God and the angels are always agender,
however as I will illustrate in more depth in the following chapters, gender in the poem is
quite explicit when the treatment of the poem’s female characters is compared to that of
the male, and even supposedly agender, ones. Some critics also discuss this scene in
reference to its homoeroticism between Raphael and Adam. Fisher writes in “Milton’s
Paradise Lost,”
Raphael smiles; he does not shuffle, look down, turn aside. And burning red is the
color of active love. Milton’s adding this one more detail of intense sensuality to
Adam’s angelic teacher makes dramatic sense. Raphael’s registering so visually
with his passionate sexuality stimulates Adam more than his maxims and
warnings hinder Adam’s doting on Eve. … To flush, not blush, with active love is
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(besides dramatically right) certainly more angelic. The only problem is that
Raphael is not talking to another angel. (3)
According to Fisher’s argument, the homoerotic, or as I argue genderless, sex between
the angels is allowed within the poem because they lack fleshly bodies when they
intertwine, yet the homoeroticism between Raphael and Adam is problematic to the poem
because of Adam’s humanity, and implicitly because of his gender. As Fisher’s quotation
illustrates, Raphael’s description of angel sex, as queer and homoerotic as it is, serves to
underscore gender relations as they unfold around this scene. As much scholarship has
focused on the queerness in this scene, I will finish my own discussion here in order to
move onto my own arguments about a queer Paradise Lost.
III. INFERNAL PROCREATION
Queered reproduction in the poem can be uncovered in a number of ways, one of which
is Milton’s use of language. The word “womb” materializes a number of times in the first
few books in places where one might not expect it, such as in Milton’s descriptions of the
physical landscapes in Hell. Milton writes,
There stood a hill not far whose grisly top
Belched fire and rolling smoke: the rest entire
Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore,
The work of sulphur. (1.679-673)
Milton’s paradoxical use of the pronoun “his” in reference to the word “womb”
immediately jumps, for not only is Milton referring to the sulfurous earth of Hell as a
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“womb,” but he is doing so with a pronoun generally thought of as masculine. Although
in his article “Milton’s Womb” Neil Forsyth asserts that Milton uses “his” as a genderneutral pronoun (81), I contend that later examples of queered reproduction in the poem
suggest that “his womb” is not as gender neutral as Forsyth suggests. In his article even
Forsyth himself questions, albeit cursorily, whether “his womb” is as neutral as it might
appear. As I will discuss in more detail later in this chapter, reproduction in the poem is a
largely male act; Satan gives birth to Sin through primogeniture, God creates man, and
then from Adam’s body God creates Eve. In this way, “his womb” is not neutral at all;
instead it sets the stage for the nature of reproduction throughout the poem, an act
traditionally thought of as feminine, which here is appropriated by men for at once
heavenly and hellish deeds.
In spite of the poem’s name, Hell is the first landscape to which readers are
introduced, contrasting it with later depictions of Eden while setting the stage for the
queered nature of reproduction in the poem. Milton’s language in this section, such as
“grisly top / Belched fire,” “glossy scurf,” and “the work of sulphur” paints a depiction of
Hell as a gross, hot, smelly place, but the last two lines make it not solely a space of
destruction, but also a space of capable of the means of creation. Even within the
belching earth of Hell, sulfur has the potential to create anew. Only a few lines later,
some of Satan’s cronies rend Hell’s womb of her “metallic ore,” further illustrating the
reproductive nature of Hell. Milton writes,
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From Heaven, …
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
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Ransacked the center, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother earth
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Opened into the hill a spacious wound
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. (1.679-692)
As both these passages illustrate, Paradise Lost is wrought with paradoxes, illustrating
how Milton imbues the poem with a sense of queerness within its very language. The
contradictions in particular of “his womb” in the first quotation and “that riches grow in
hell” and the “precious bane” of Hell’s mother earth in the second reveal the queer and
reproductive nature of Milton’s Hell, for even in a place as sulfurous and grisly as Hell,
“treasures better hid” can still exist. Yet Milton placing reproduction into the very earth
of Hell is not as simple as saying that luxury is possible in both Heaven and Hell; the
image of a fertile Mother Earth is a well-known one, but here Milton contrasts this
fecundity with the fetidity of her “bowels,” queering notions of reproduction and gender.
Additionally, Milton’s reference to the earth of Hell as “their mother earth” appears to
contrast with his earlier reference to it as “his womb,” yet one can take this to mean that
the landscape of Hell is capable of being simultaneously male and female and procreative
and destructive. In a way that is quintessentially queer, Hell is capable of being many
things at once, of inhabiting multiple spaces that are usually thought of as binaries, such
as masculine and feminine and creative and destructive. In spite of Forsyth’s assertion
that “his womb” creates “no gender confusion at all” (82), the contradiction of Hell
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simultaneously being a feminine mother earth and having a masculine womb serves as
evidence that “his womb,” and the landscape of Hell to which it refers, are not gender
neutral in the least.
Milton’s descriptions of this Hellscape also queer even Edenic scenes of
reproduction within the poem, for the “ribs of gold” evidently allude to Eve’s birth from
Adam’s rib later. By pulling both reproduction and “treasures better hid” down from
Heaven, Milton distorts, and queers them. Milton draws complicated parallels between
the heavenly and hellish characters in the poem, and the “ribs of gold” in Hell serve as a
precedent for such an act. Most readers know before going into the poem that Eve will
later be created out of Adam’s rib, so this allusion is an act of foreshadowing both in that
it foreshadows Eve’s specific birth, the masculine nature of birth in the poem in general,
and the violent and commodifying treatment of women’s bodies. Both of these passages
steal male reproductive power away from God and into Hell, making a Heavenly act
profane. Milton referring to Hell’s “ribs of gold” and Hell’s masculine womb mimics,
challenges, and defames the procreative powers of God and Eden, a theme that will
reassert itself as the epic poem continues. But these quotations illustrate not only the
complicated relationship between good and evil in the poem, but also the complicated
relationship between the poem and its female characters.
The “ribs of gold” in line 690 appear to be a luxurious and perhaps even beautiful
object in an otherwise loathsome space, but what truly highlights them is the violence
with which they are ripped from the body of Hell’s mother earth. Milton’s language in
this passage is fraught with imagery of sexual violation, from “impious hands” rifling
mother earth’s bowels, a Miltonian synonym for the womb and female reproductive
18
organs, to the demons opening into her a “spacious wound.” It is important that only
when the land is violated does Milton personify it as a woman, for although Paradise
Lost is largely a story about creation, it is also undeniably a text that abuses and
commodifies women’s bodies. Not only do Milton’s descriptions of Hell’s landscape set
up the poem as a space that fosters male-centric reproduction, but they also set it up as a
space that encourages the violation of women’s bodies. Milton’s reference to Hell as
“mother earth” is further complicated by the fact later Eve is referred to quite often as the
mother of mankind, conflating explicitly female reproduction and motherhood with rape.
As Minaz Jooma writes in “The Alimentary Structures of Incest in Paradise Lost,”
A lust for political power, rendered as the gouging of a mother’s entrails,
conflates the desire to possess a valuable commodity with male sexual appetite.
Mammon’s example figures rebellion against the father specifically in terms of
“rifling” that female who, as Freud would have it, most properly belongs to the
father. The rape of “mother” earth, her enforced yielding of consumables and her
bodily disfigurement are predicated upon the assumption that these will enable an
alternate kingdom to be created. Each of these actions is graphically replicated in
book 2 when Satan encounters Sin and Death guarding the Gates of Hell. (30)
I will draw parallels between Milton’s descriptions of Hell and his treatment of Satan,
Sin, and Death in more detail later in this chapter, but here I want to focus on Jooma’s
assertion that these passages “[conflate] the desire to possess a valuable commodity with
male sexual appetite.” Eve and Sin are detailed characters of their own, but one cannot
deny the fact that the first female body the reader has access to in the poem is a female
personification of Hell who is violated violently and sexually. As Jooma posits, the
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demons rifle mother earth not just to access her “treasures better hid,” an undeniable
sexual innuendo, but also to rebel against God “the father.” This further complicates
mother earth’s female body, for in these lines and later in the poem women’s bodies are
treated as the property of their father; Sin’s belongs to Satan, and Eve’s belongs to Adam.
These lines encapsulate how women in the poem are reduced to their bodies and more
specifically their reproductive organs, for in these lines mother earth is nothing more than
a body for men to ravage.
IV. THE CREATION OF SIN
After laying the groundwork for Hell to act as a site both of creation and dissolution in
Book 1, Milton relays the story of Sin’s birth, the first procreative story of the poem, in
Book 2. Not only is the epic’s first birth scene the most demonic, it is also the most
disturbing. As Satan is making his way out of Hell on his journey to Eden, he runs into
Sin, his daughter, who holds the key to get out of Hell. Even though Sin painfully burst
from Satan’s head when he first thought of rebelling against God in front of all the other
angels, he apparently has forgotten her completely and Sin needs to remind him of her
existence. Sin asks him,
Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem
Now in thine eyes so foul, once deemed so fair
In Heaven, when at the assembly and, in sight
Of all the seraphim, with thee combined
In bold conspiracy against Heaven’s king,
All on a sudden miserable pain
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Surprised thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth, till on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed
Out of thy head I sprung? (2.747-759)
The fact that Sin reminding Satan of her birth is the first birth scene of the epic is notable
because on the surface Paradise Lost is about the divine creation of man, when in reality,
creation of life in the poem is present even in the fetid bowels of Hell and from the sinful
mind of Satan. Satan’s begetting of new life without the interjection of either a woman or
God is a narcissistic act, and it is this absence of God that separates the birth of Sin from
the birth of Eve. Through the narcissistic birth of Sin, Satan engages in an act that is not
only transgressive against God, but is also sexually and reproductively transgressive.
Immediately after Sin springs from his head, Satan has sex of dubious consent
with her, resulting in the birth of Death. Sin is one of the most unfortunate characters of
the poem, for Death then rapes her, giving life to “yelling monsters that with ceaseless
cry” eternally burrow themselves into and out of her entrails (2.795). I am loathe to
associate these acts of rape with queerness because I don’t want to relate queerness with
men’s violence against women, however fictional and demonic they may be, but the
reproduction of and surrounding Sin is certainly an example of non-normative
procreation in the epic. Forsyth writes, “The whole scene is painful and perverse, selflove replacing mutual love, but the genders are not bent” (84). Although “the genders are
not bent,” Sin is not only born out of Satan’s head, a place on the body as far from the
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bowels as one can get, but she is also born “likest to [Satan] in shape,” and is thus not
only his daughter, but his feminine mirror as well. As I will discuss in greater detail later,
Satan immediately wants to have sex with Sin not merely because she is attractive to him,
but because of their shared appearance. Thus, both in his creation of Sin and his carnal
relations with her, Satan is replacing the love he should bear for God with a queer sexual
desire for himself. Satan’s “painful and perverse self-love” is what renders Sin’s birth,
and her subsequent sexual relationship with her father, queer. Sin’s hellish existence in
Hell is an example of the disastrous effects of reproduction without the intervention of
God, and her torturous existence can be attributed to the fact that she is the embodiment
of sin, but it can also be seen as a result of Satan’s sinfully queered self-love.
V. CHAOTIC CREATION
As Satan and the narrative move through their journey from the bowels of Hell to the
Garden of Eden, so too do we as readers travel among different sites of irregular
reproduction. One such site is Chaos, which Satan must cross in order to reach Paradise;
Milton writes,
Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds. (2.910-916)
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This quotation illustrates that as Chaos serves as the bridge between Hell and Eden, it
combines the language of deterioration from Hell and the imagery of fecundity associated
with Eden. Such a paradox is present in the second line, where Milton refers to Chaos as
“the womb of nature and perhaps her grave”: the word “womb” references propagation
while the word “grave” serves as a grim memento mori. This paradox mirrors those in
earlier passages, where Milton associates wombs and bowels, while here he does wombs
and graves. This line illustrates the simultaneously reproductive and destructive natures
of the poem as a whole, for both reproduction and destruction occur in Hell and Eden
alike, as emphasized through their combination in Chaos.
In these lines Milton refers to nature using female pronouns, harkening back to
Hell’s male womb and its mother earth. Additionally, Milton describes Chaos as
combining the “pregnant causes” of the four elements, invoking multiple meanings of the
word pregnant. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, pregnant has a multitude of
meanings, from “full of significance,” to its more commonplace meaning of being
pregnant with a child. The first meaning references Chaos containing “his dark materials
to create more worlds,” the potential to create not just new life but new worlds entirely,
so Chaos is not solely made up of God’s “dark materials,” but of the essence of life itself.
The latter meaning of pregnant is tied to Chaos’ function as “the womb of nature,” for it
is a site that is simultaneously a tumultuous abyss and a fertile site full of God’s “dark
materials,” conflating childbirth, a human and generally female act, with God’s ability to
create entirely new worlds. Drawing from Milton’s descriptions of Chaos and Hell,
reproduction in the poem thus far is a contradictory notion, for as sulfurous or
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rampageous as Hell and Chaos are, they are also undoubtedly sites of both potential and
explicit proliferation.
Chaos’ ability to be both nature’s womb and grave further illustrates the nonbinary nature of the poem’s landscapes. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in
the Bible “womb” means “the stomach as the seat of the feelings and affections; the
heart, the soul.” Both this definition of womb and the more modern meaning are
complicated by the fact that Milton repeatedly uses this word in different and often
paradoxical situations. From the masculine womb of Hell to the graveyard womb of
Chaos, Milton queers reproduction throughout the poem through his conceptive language.
As this OED definition illustrates, even when bowels are used as a synonym for wombs
and when wombs are also graves, the ability to create new life, and new souls, is still
present.
VI. SAME-SEX REPRODUCTION IN EDEN
After spending a considerable amount of time in the reproductive spaces of Hell and
Chaos, the reader is not told explicitly about Eve’s birth until Book 8 of the epic.
Although arguably Adam and Eve’s births are the most important ones of the poem, for it
is they who lose paradise, the fact that their stories follow those of Sin and Satan means
that one cannot help but compare their births, as Edenic as they are, to the violent ones in
Hell. Adam says of God,
Who, stooping, opened my left side and took
From thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm
And life blood steaming fresh; wide was the wound,
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But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed,
The rib he formed and fashioned with his hands,
Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Manlike but different sex, so lovely fair… (8.465-471)
Unlike Sin’s birth from a single man, Eve’s life is created through the body of Adam and
the power of God, a queer act in its exclusion of the female body and its inclusion of two
male ones. Additionally, although Eve’s birth is relatively tame compared to Sin’s,
parallels remain. Adam speaks of his “life blood steaming fresh; wide was the wound”;
although this wide wound immediately heals because it is God who made it, the mild
gore of this scene is notable. God reaching into Adam’s flesh for the rib also harkens
back to when the demons of Hell “Opened into the hill a spacious wound / And digged
out ribs of gold,” both in the violence and in the fact that out of the wounds come ribs
(Milton 1.689-91). Initially the golden ribs appear to be a simple allusion to Adam’s, but
comparing these two passages to each other highlights a potential sense of violence in
Eve’s birth that might not have been readily apparent otherwise. These lines illustrate that
even God and Adam’s birth of Eve requires some blood to be spilled.
Eve’s birth serves as an Edenic parallel to Sin’s, for both of them violently spring
from body parts of men with whom they will later procreate. For as Jooma asserts,
The relationship between Adam and Eve in the poem must be rethought in light of
the daughter’s debt to her creator …. But, as Adam and Eve stand in precisely the
same relation to one another (father-begettor to daughter-begot) as Satan and Sin,
doesn’t the union of Adam and Eve become as problematic as that of Satan and
Sin? (33)
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As Jooma asks, why does the poem treat Satan and Sin’s relationship as incestuous yet it
does not do so to Adam and Eve’s? Forsyth says himself of Sin’s birth that “the whole
scene is painful and perverse, self-love replacing mutual love,” and clearly Eve and
Adam are meant to be an ideal relationship in contrast to Sin and Satan’s violent one.
Jooma’s argument is placing modern notions of incest onto a relationship that neither
Milton nor the Christian religion as a whole deem incestuous or problematic, yet the
unmistakable parallels between Eve and Sin’s relationships to the men who begat them
remain. Additionally, as Erin Murphy writes in “Paradise Lost and the Politics of
‘Begetting,’”
Though I have been metaphorically referring to Eve as an incestuous daughtermother, the poem never describes her as Adam’s daughter. Thus, the question of
what Adam’s familial title would be if he had one remains unanswered. Some
critics have argued that Adam seems more Eve’s mother than her father… (41)
As Murphy argues, Eve and Adam’s relationship is full of the same incestuous potential
as Sin and Satan’s. Like Sin, Eve’s birth is queered in that she is born from a man who is
at once progenitor and spouse, yet it is evident that the text treats Sin’s incestuous
relationship with Satan as inherently different than Eve’s divine one with Adam. What is
also intriguing about this passage is that Murphy mentions that Adam “seems more Eve’s
mother than her father,” in that he gives birth to her through his body, further queering
Eve’s birth by bending the gender of her “mother.”
Eve’s birth is queer not only because she is born from a man’s body instead of a
woman’s, but also because two men are present and involved in her birth. Forsyth writes,
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Here, as in Genesis, though sanitized and adapted to the idea of an all powerful
God, a divine ‘mid-husband’ reaches in with his bare hands and brings out the
material of life. What Milton does, if we take seriously the implication of ‘his
womb’, is to align these various passages we have been accumulating with the
ambivalent sexuality that pervades the poem, beginning with the very recreation
in the opening lines of the cosmogonic myth itself. (84)
The “ambivalent sexuality” to which Forsyth refers is the queerness that I argue not only
pervades the poem, but also defines its sense of reproduction. Everything about Eve’s
birth is queered, from being born from the body of a man to the “divine mid-husband”
who helps to bring her into the world he has created. The story of God creating Eve out
of Adam’s rib is famous and is most likely not often read as queer, yet the way that
Milton interprets it and the queerness of reproduction permeating the rest of the poem
illustrate that within Paradise Lost, even well-known stories about the creation of the first
heterosexual couple can be queered.
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CHAPTER TWO: SIN
I. SIN’S BODY
Sin serves as a macabre reminder of what happens in Paradise Lost when love for oneself
exceeds one’s love of God. Her birth is an instance of queer, non-normative reproduction
that illustrates the undercurrent of transgression in the poem, yet her punitively gendered
existence highlights that queerness and misogyny are simultaneously present. Although
Sin is an outward manifestation of Satan’s narcissism, the poem’s cruel treatment of Sin
as a character of her own reveals the strange and often disturbing notions of femininity
and womanhood in the poem, and how female transgressions are punished differently
than male ones. This tension between the non-normative nature of her birth and her
misogynistic treatment in the poem serves as an example of why whether Paradise Lost
is a feminist or misogynist text is so contested.
In my previous chapter I discussed Sin’s birth in reference to its queerness and
non-normative nature, but here I would like to delve deeper into her description of her
birth in order to reveal more about Sin as a character, not just an outward manifestation
of Satan’s queer narcissism. Sin recounts the story of her birth to Satan and the reader,
Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem
Now in thine eyes so foul, once deemed so fair
In Heaven, when at the assembly and, in sight
Of all the seraphim, with thee combined
In bold conspiracy against Heaven’s king,
All on a sudden miserable pain
Surprised thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum
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In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth, till on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed
Out of thy head I sprung? Amazement seized
All the host of Heaven; back they recoiled afraid
At first and called me ‘Sin’ and for a sign
Portentous held me; but familiar grown
I pleased, and with attractive graces won
The most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing
Becam’st enamored… (2.747-765)
Here Sin recounts her birth to Satan, who apparently has forgotten that an entirely new
being once appeared out of his head. As this passage illustrates, an important aspect of
Sin’s character in the poem is her appearance; as I will discuss later, after being cast out
of Heaven Sin takes on a monstrous form. Yet in this passage even though she is the
physical embodiment of sinfulness, Sin is still “heavenly fair, a goddess armed” who won
over the inhabitants of Heaven with her “attractive graces.” Although the angels were
right in thinking Sin a portentous sign, the fact that she was able to win them over
specifically because of her physical attractiveness reveals the untrustworthy nature of
beauty in the poem. These are the only details the reader learns about Sin’s time in
Heaven, but the fact that she is able to win over even “the most averse” of the angels with
her appearance in spite of the fact that she is sin reveals the poem’s distrust of women in
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general, but more specifically its fear of beautiful women, and women who use their
beauty to get what they want.
In addition to revealing the untrustworthy nature of women and feminine beauty
in the poem, Sin’s appearance in Heaven is also important because it is the cause of
Satan’s desire for her; Sin describes herself as “likest” to Satan in appearance, and that
when he sees his “perfect image” in her he becomes “enamored” with her and thus
decides to have sex with her. As discussed earlier, Sin’s birth in and of itself is
narcissistic because she is borne from Satan without the intervention of God or a mother,
but the fact that Satan then has sex with the result of his self-love reveals the truly
perverse nature of infernal sexual relationships in the poem. As Jooma writes in “The
Alimentary Structures of Incest in Paradise Lost,”
As it is expressed here, the father’s desire for his daughter is a form of selfgratification; if Satan’s sexual attraction to Sin is attributable to her appearance,
that appearance pleases by its likeness to his own. The incest is both an
articulation of self, and a consolidation of self and self [sic] through a form of
familial cannibalism whence the father libidinously consumes his own creation.
(29)
Even though Sin is indeed a separate character from Satan, their shared appearance and
familial connection result in the cannibalism of Sin. Sin’s birth serves as a multiplication
of Satan’s sinfulness and his hatred of God, but the children that result from their sexual
union do nothing but consume and distort Sin, while Satan remains unpunished for his
incestuous acts. This punishment is a reflection of Satan’s transgression against God, but
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the fact remains that Sin is the one doomed to an eternity of torture, and her body is the
one ravaged by her incestuous sons.
Both Jooma and the poem regard Sin as a physical extension of Satan, but the
gendered differences in how the poem treats them and Sin’s limited attempts at autonomy
reveal that she is a character of her own. The issue of consent in Satan and Sin’s sexual
relationship is an obsequious one, yet this passage illustrates how Sin exercises her
limited sense of autonomy by desiring Satan. At the end of this passage she says that she
“with attractive graces won / The most averse, thee chiefly.” The results of Sin and
Satan’s union make it problematic at best to say that Sin is able to consent to sex with her
own father, but her use of the verb “won” implies that she has the possibility of both
action and autonomy. Sin’s treatment in the poem gives her very little ability to make her
own choices, but the fact that she is able to do so through her sexual desire of Satan
reveals not only that she is a separate character from him, but that even in such a
misogynistic text a character as reviled as Sin has a chance at free will.
Sin’s first appearance in the poem is quite different from her description of her
beauty in the above passage. Milton writes,
Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seemed woman to the waist and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed
With mortal sting…. (2.648-653)
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In the first passage, Sin describes herself after her birth as a “heavenly fair” goddess, yet
the quotation above paints an entirely different picture. Here, Sin “seems” like a beautiful
woman from the waist up, but from the waist down she is a foul and “voluminous”
serpent “with mortal sting.” Milton’s use of language such as “voluminous and vast”
evokes images of a huge, formidable snake monster, contrasting Sin’s description of
herself in Heaven as a beautiful goddess. Milton’s language here reveals that in spite of
the fairness of Sin’s upper half, her foul lower half means that she only seems half
human, and that the text cannot even be sure of that. Not only is Sin now an ugly, halfhuman monstrosity, she is also armed with a deadly sting like a scorpion. This passage is
the first time the reader “meets” Sin, setting her up as a terrifying monster, not an angel
or woman who has been punished for having sex of dubious consent with her satanic
father. Although Satan’s appearance also changed after they fell from Heaven, the exact
time that Sin’s body changes reveals the gendered mode of punishment in the poem.
After telling Satan about her own birth, she recounts the birth of their incestuous
son Death;
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way
Tore through my entrails, that, with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew
Transformed… (2.782-4)
In Book 1, Milton uses beautiful language to basically describe Satan’s visage after being
cast out of Heaven as very large (196-8), and his actual transformation is given little
detail. Yet Sin is doomed to become a half serpent through the painful and violent birth
of Death. This birth scene mirrors Sin’s own in its violent language and monstrous
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imagery, yet Sin’s body is painfully made grotesque in a way that Satan’s is not. Death
tears through Sin’s entrails, permanently distorting her “nether shape,” an abnormally
nebulous phrase for Milton. Milton also refers to Sin’s lower half as her “entrails,”
rendering Sin’s womb and vulva monstrous and inhuman. The change in perspective
between this quotation and Sin’s first appearance in the poem transforms Sin from a
formidable monster into a woman, who “with fear and pain” is forced to give birth to
Death as her reproductive organs are deformed. Even though Sin is sin, her fear and pain
and the sudden and undesired birth that caused it make her a sympathetic character. The
distortion only of Sin’s lower half reveals not only that this is a punishment for having
sex with Satan, but that it is an inherently gendered punishment that Satan does not share.
Jooma writes,
Associated in this period [Milton’s] with both gustation and gestation, the entrails
are emphasized here, not for their role in Sin’s self-nourishment, but with her role
in nurturing others. Libidinously consumed by Satan, and flesh for Satan and
Death’s progeny, the daughter – ordinarily reliant upon the parent for sustenance
– is transfigured by incest; she is cannibalized into a nourishing mother. (32)
Although Sin functions in the poem as an allegory for sin, her bodily transformation
illustrates that as a female character, even an allegorical one, Sin is punished for both her
existence and for having sex with Satan in painfully misogynistic ways. As a woman and
now an infernal mother, Sin is not allowed to be a character of her own. Additionally,
Murphy writes of Sin’s reproductive scenes, “These violent images of reproduction gone
awry figure the problem of a system turned in upon itself” (35). Through incest and rape,
the poem forces Sin into a part of this system of reproduction, yet the system is focused
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on Sin’s body. Although Satan and Death are also parts of this system, Sin is the only
who pays the price through the eternal ravaging of her body. For not only is her
appearance permanently disfigured by Death’s birth, but him immediately raping her
results in the cannibalistic beasts who constantly feed off of her.
Here, I would like to discuss how not only are Sin’s scenes of reproduction
painful and violent, they are also ultimately scenes of rape. Although Sin’s first sexual
encounter with Satan appears to be consensual, the fact that it is between the newly born
Sin and her father, and that consent is only somewhat apparent illustrates that Sin’s
relationship to sex is incestuous and of dubious consent from the start. In “’Embraces
Forcible and Foul’: Viewing Milton’s Sin as a Rape Victim,” Alexander A. Myers
discusses the scene of Death raping Sin. He writes,
From the beginning, the setting of the rape is stark and cold, the echoing of the
word death both creating an ominously aural quality and emphasizing the empty
solitude of Sin’s predicament. It is immediately apparent that the existence of
Death is threatening to Sin and that she must face him alone. However,
sympathetic sighs do come from the caves of the feminized hell, possibly
insinuating a yonic symbol which corresponds to and empathizes with Sin’s
imminent genital violation and pain. (11)
In Chapter 1 I discussed how the demons pillaging Hell’s Mother Earth served as a
foreshadowing for the treatment of Sin. Myers refers to lines 785-95 of Book 2,
immediately following Death’s violent birth which ravaged Sin’s body. When Sin is
viewed as a rape victim, the alteration of her body and her doomed existence with the hell
beasts make her fate seem all the more barbaric, not only because she has not actually
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done anything wrong that deserves such punishment, but also because as Myers argues
the language of the scene creates sympathy for Sin. Additionally, Myers’ mention of a
“feminized hell” off of my previous discussions of Hell’s masculine womb and Mother
Earth; although I argue that Milton’s “feminized hell” sets up the poem as a queer space,
in contrast to Myers I also argue that it sets up the poem as a space that is hostile toward
women. What is particularly interesting about this quotation is that Myers says Hell
empathizes with Sin, harkening back to the fact that they are both victims of assault.
What is also important to the scene at the Gate of Hell is the reunion of Sin and
Death with Satan, which illustrates the entirely incestuous nature of Sin’s sexuality in the
poem. In “The Sources of Milton’s Sin Reconsidered,” Catherine Gimelli Martin
discusses the relationship between Sin, Satan, and Death. Martin writes,
… the love triangle – insofar as there is one – which emerges between Satan and
his Son Death is not even inversely analogous to the one-sided rivalry between
Circe and Scylla. But ultimately, Satan and Death are not really capable of
“romantic” rivalry at all: they neither compete for Sin’s favors (Satan no longer
even recognizes her after his grisly son’s birth) nor is love of any kind lost
between father, son, and mother, all of whom are cursed by their utterly disparate,
utterly selfish, and infinitely self-consuming experiences of “love.” (2)
This quotation particularly reminded me of Jooma’s argument, for I feel that what is
missing in Martin’s argument is a discussion that Satan and Death do not need to
“compete for Sin’s favors” because as the poem illustrates they both own her body, as
evidenced by the change in her body after giving birth to Satan’s son Death, and by
Death’s immediate rape of her resulting in the hellhounds. The relationship between Sin,
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Death, and Satan is not a “love triangle” so much as it is an instance of men assaulting
the body of a woman, who is the only one in this situation who is punished. I have drawn
attention to this quotation of Martin’s because it illustrates how the poem’s notions of
queerness and sexism are bound to one another. In my first chapter, I argued that Sin’s
birth is a scene of queer reproduction, yet here I want to point out that within the poem
transgressions against binaries can still result in violence against women.
This gendered change in Sin’s body after giving birth to Death is another example
of the importance of her appearance, but unfortunately for Sin the ravaging of her body
does not end here. She then gives birth to hellhounds which are the fruit of Death’s rape;
Milton describes Sin further,
About her middle round
A cry of hell hounds never ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb
And kennel there… (2.654-659)
As if being doomed to an eternity with a “scaly fold” for a bottom half wasn’t enough,
Sin is also forced to be eternally devoured by the results of her incestuous rape. Just as
Sin’s serpentine lower half is gendered, so too is this eternal existence of being consumed
by her hellhound progeny. As Jooma writes in her above quote, Sin is “transfigured by
incest” from a beautiful angel into an ugly monster whose children constantly feed on her
for “nourishment,” as Jooma puts it. Through this cannibalism, Sin is stripped down to
little more than a womb, a source of nourishment and pleasure for both Satan and their
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incestuous spawn. Eve and Sin’s births create a certain amount of pain in Adam and
Satan, but there is no birth scene in the poem that is quite as gruesome or as painful as the
multiple ones to which Sin is subjected. Milton’s reference to Sin’s womb instead of her
“nether shape” highlights the poem’s use of reproduction as a punishment for women
who transgress, or in Sin’s case whose existence in itself is transgressive. As Murphy
writes, “Unable to escape her progeny, Sin is reduced to a constant state of reproduction”
(36). Not only is Sin’s heavenly beauty wrenched from her, but specifically her womb
and her vulva are made monstrous, revealing how women in the poem are reduced to
their ability to be mothers, and specifically how Sin is punished by being forced to be a
nourishing mother to her incestuous, cannibalistic spawn.
Eve is also reduced to her role of a mother by constantly being referred to as “the
mother of all mankind,” but Sin’s transformation into a monster by becoming a mother
renders her quite different from Eve in the eyes of the poem. As van den Berg writes in
“Eve, Sin, Witchcraft, and Paradise Lost,” “In the allegorical portrait of Sin, Milton’s
reference to European witches emphasizes violations of the human body – cannibalism,
sexual perversion – that commence from an evil figured as female ugliness…” (351-2).
Although the focus of my argument is not European witches, van den Berg’s connection
between evil, powerful women that witches signify and Sin is an important one. In this
quotation, van den Berg concisely encapsulates Sin, for her entire allegorical existence is
predicated on these violations of her body, violations that are ultimately caused by
Satan’s sin of defying God, not necessarily anything Sin has done up to this point in the
poem apart from desiring her father, and even then the consent of their union is murky at
best. The radical change in her appearance reifies not only the poem’s distrust of vain
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women, but also the dichotomy of good and beautiful versus bad and ugly, a dichotomy
that is illustrated in Sin’s reproductive organs. Sin’s body is permanently altered in a
gendered way that Satan and Death’s bodies are not. Milton employs Sin as the
allegorical personification of sin, but the fact that this allegory is embodied in the raped
and ravaged body of a female character reveals how reproduction is used in the epic as a
punishment for women who do not obey. In this case, rather than challenging binaries,
the poem bolsters them by contrasting monstrous Sin to beautiful Eve through Sin’s
sexual assault.
Sin is not the only character whose appearance is altered by the fall from grace,
but she is the only one whose appearance is changed in such a gendered way. In the first
Book, Milton describes Satan in reference to his massive size; Milton writes that Satan is
“in bulk as huge / As whom the fables name of monstrous size, / Titanian, or Earth-born,
that warred on Jove…” (1.196-8). Satan’s description here mirrors Sin’s first appearance
later in the poem when Milton describes her as “voluminous and vast,” yet this is the
extent of Satan’s physicality in Book 1, and the extent to which Satan and Sin share an
appearance after Death’s birth. As enormous as Milton says Satan is, his agendered,
powerful, and almost godly appearance after falling contrasts sharply with Sin’s. This
difference, along with the fact that Sin only changes after giving birth to her incestuous
child, highlights that Sin’s infernal punishment is a result of her gender while Satan’s is
not.
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II. SIN AND SPENSER’S “ERROUR”
Sin’s treatment as contained within Paradise Lost is important to understand the
dichotomy between the queer, transgressive potential of the poem when viewed through a
modern lens and the fact that its female characters are treated in incredibly misogynistic
and violent ways. However, the fact that Sin is an allusion to Spenser’s “Errour” from
The Faerie Queene lends a new facet to her treatment in the poem. Error and Sin are both
female monsters with the upper half of a woman and the lower half of a snake “with
mortal sting” whose beastly children burrow into their mother to be reborn again over and
over. Spenser describes Error,
By which he saw the ugly monster plaine,
Halfe like a serpent horribly displaide,
But th’other halfe did womans shape retaine,
Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.
And as she lay upon the durtie ground,
Her huge long taile her den all overspred,
Yet was in knots and many boughtes upwound,
Pointed with mortall sting. Of her there bred
A thousand yong ones, which she daily fed,
Sucking upon her poisnous dugs, each one
Of sundry shapes, yet all ill favored:
Soone as that uncought light upon them shone,
Into her mouth they crept, and suddain all were gone. (Spenser 1.123-135)
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This quotation illustrates how heavily Milton draws from Spenser’s Error in his
descriptions of Sin, from the serpentine lower half “with mortal(l) sting,” to the
monstrous children who eternally feed from their mother and have the ability to retreat
back within her. Although the exact words used to describe Error and Sin are not always
exactly the same, they share a similar tone; Error is “Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full
of vile disdaine,” and Sin is “formidable,” and “voluminous and vast.” In addition to
being monstrous in appearance, Sin and Error’s womanhood is also important. Neither
needed to be a woman to be a half-snake monster with hellhounds eternally eating them,
but Spenser and Milton’s choice to make them women reveals their fear of femininity.
Yet although Sin and Error are similar in appearance and in gender, their texts treat them
quite differently. As Martin argues, “Sin’s ‘sting’ is fully internal, not external…” (3). As
I have discussed, Sin is punished by being eternally cannibalized by her hellhound
children, which is the sting to which Martin refers. In contrast, Error’s relationship to her
monster children appears more symbiotic and less parasitic. Error does end her stint in
The Faerie Queene with death, but she is able to use her sting against others while Sin’s
is eternally used against herself.
While Sin is both an allusion to Error and the allegorical personification of in,
Error is the one who is more allegory than character. Both Sin’s and Error’s initial
appearances are described by an omniscient narrator, but what separates Sin from Error is
that eventually she is given free reign of her history and is allowed to tell it to the reader
from her point of view. While equally monstrous in appearance, Sin actually has the
chance to win sympathy from the reader, while Error is a terrifying monster from start to
finish.
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Sin’s appearance is based off of Error and quite often Milton’s language parallels
Spenser’s, but their treatment as characters varies greatly. Although both are equally
gruesome in appearance, Error is the only one who does outright monstrous and violent
things. In a gruesome scene, she attacks Redcrosse as a result of very little provocation
before being violently murdered. Spenser writes,
Yet kindling rage, her selfe she gathered round,
And all att once her beastly body raizd
With doubled forces high above the ground:
Tho wrapping up her wretched sterne arownd,
Lept fierce upon his shield, and her huge traine
All suddenly about his body wound… (155-160)
Both Error and Sin transgress against the hero of their story, in Error’s case Redcrosse
and in Sin’s God, but the ways they go about their transgressions highlight their
differences. Error is a violent and formidable monster who attacks Redcrosse for no
reason, and Spenser’s descriptions of her instill an understandable sense of fear in the
reader. In contrast, by allowing Sin to be the narrator of her own story Milton gives her a
sense of sympathy, so when she does actively defy God the reader can understand why.
Milton writes,
To whom the incestuous mother thus replied:
“Thus, therefore, on these herbs and fruits and flowers
Feed first, on each beast next, and fish and fowl,
No homely morsels, and whatever thing
The scythe of Time mows down devour unspared,
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Till I, in man residing through the race,
His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect
And season him thy last and sweetest prey.” (10.602-609)
In this passage, Sin and Death arrive in Paradise and she instructs him to desiccate it,
while she promises to “infect” all of mankind. This quotation illustrates Sin’s true
transgressive potential, and ultimately separates her from Error. In The Faerie Queene,
Error is nothing more than a monster who attacks Redcrosse because of her monstrosity,
but in Paradise Lost Sin is a complex, while still problematic, character with desires and
feelings of her own. She is not simply an allegory for sin or an allusion to Error, but is
instead a complicated female character who still manages autonomous action in a text
that allows very little of that for women. Additionally, Error attacks and is killed by a
single man, while Sin desires not only revenge against God, but to destroy all of Paradise
and to infect all of mankind. In this way, Sin’s transgressions are far more revolutionary
than Error’s. Sin wants revenge against God because she wants to please Satan, but also
because she wants to return to Heaven. The poem never posits Sin’s desire for revenge as
a result of her distorted body, incestuous rape, or being eternally consumed by
hellhounds, but the fact that she uses what free will she has to seek revenge in spite of all
these things reveals that Sin is far more than a mere allegory or allusion.
III. SIN’S TRANSGRESSION OF CHOICE
There is a wealth of literature about free will versus God’s will in Paradise Lost that I
cannot begin to discuss in any meaningful way here, but the fact remains that God
making Sin the keeper of the gate between Hell and Chaos is a strange decision on God’s
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part, considering that he recently cast her and her father out of Heaven, and he probably
knows that Sin, being sin, will disobey him in order to help her lover and father.
Regardless of whether God knew or planned that Sin would open the gate for Satan, what
is important here is Sin’s choice to defy God, not whether or not God orchestrated her
defiance. Sin says to Satan,
Thou art my father, thou my author, thou
My being gav’st me; whom should I obey
But thee, whom follow? Thou wilt bring me soon
To that new world of light and bliss among
The gods who live at ease, where I shall reign
At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems
Thy daughter and thy darling, without end. (2.864-870)
This quotation illustrates Sin’s twin reasons for opening the gates of Hell for Satan, for it
is partly out of a desire to obey and please her father slash beloved, and it is partly
because she wants to return to Heaven. In this way, although Sin is obeying one man,
Satan, she is also making the autonomous choice to disobey another. The ethics of Sin
and Satan’s sexual relationship are convoluted, but this passage is the first instance in the
poem where Sin is able to choose her fate after being ravaged by childbirth. Until this
point, everything that has happened to her is because of the actions of men – she is only
born because Satan has the first sinful thought, Satan is the one who chooses to have
incestuous and narcissistic sex with her, and then Death irrevocably changes her body
through his birth and subsequent rape. In this passage, Sin imagines herself voluptuously
reigning at Satan’s side, an image that illustrates Sin casting off her subservience through
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her choice to open the gates for Satan, and her desire to reign alongside him as an equal.
As problematic and misogynistic as Sin’s existence as a character is, this moment of
defiance reveals her potential as a transgressive character.
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CHAPTER THREE: QUEER EVE
I. INTRODUCTION
Sin and Eve are the only two female characters in Paradise Lost, and the reader is
introduced to Sin and the landscape of Hell long before meeting Adam and Eve and
exploring Paradise, so Eve’s characterization in the poem is undoubtedly linked to Sin’s.
In many ways the poem treats them as opposites, with Eve representing the ideal motherwoman and Sin representing how incredibly wrong womanhood can go. Yet, whether
Milton intended it or not, Sin and Eve share a number of similarities, complicating both
of their characters and revealing the queer and feminist potential of the poem. In this
chapter, I will explore Eve’s sense of queerness, and the differences and similarities
between her and Sin and what they reveal about the state of womanhood in the poem.
II. EVE’S QUEER BIRTH
I discussed the queer nature of Eve’s birth in my first chapter, but I would like to touch
on it again before discussing Eve as a queer character herself. The reader learns about her
birth when Adam tells Raphael the story of his life. Although in this chapter I will discuss
the scene immediately following Eve’s birth as she tells it to Adam, it is important that
Adam recounts the actual story of Eve’s birth, not her. This contrasts with the story of
Sin’s birth, which she relates to Satan and the reader. I do argue that Eve’s story of the
lake scene parallels Sin’s birth tale, but the fact that it is Adam who has the agency to
describe Eve’s actual birth illustrates her submission to him. Adam says,
Who, stooping, opened my left side and took
From thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm
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And life blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound,
But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed.
The rib he formed and fashioned with his hands;
Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Manlike but different sex, so lovely fair
That what seemed fair in all the world seemed now
Mean, ….
She disappeared and left me dark; I waked
To find her or forever to deplore
Her loss and other pleasures all abjure… (8.464-480)
As these lines illustrate, Adam centers Eve’s birth, and the moments following it, around
himself. It is important to note that when Adam tells Raphael the story of his life, he
includes Eve’s birth without detailing her own feelings around it. Instead, he focuses on
his own, from excitement about her beauty to sadness when she disappears. Eve is an
integral part of the poem, but as these lines illustrate, and as I will argue in this chapter,
the poem treats her as ultimately submissive to Adam. Before moving on to my
discussion of Eve herself, I would like once again to mention the queer and masculine
nature of her birth. She is born from the body of one man and is brought into existence by
another, a queer act in its exclusion of the female body. As I will argue, Eve’s desire for
her reflection instill in her a sense of queerness, that while similar to her birth in its
challenging of sexual binaries, is ultimately different in that Eve’s queerness is
quintessentially feminine, while her birth is a result of masculine bodies.
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III. NARCISSISTIC EVE
After spending the first three books of the poem in Hell, the reader is finally introduced
to Adam, Eve, and Paradise in Book 4, where we learn about Eve’s first moments of
existence when she describes them to Adam. This is reminiscent of when Sin tells the
story of her own birth to Satan, yet the differences between these two scenes is that Sin
has agency over the telling of her actual birth, while Eve only has agency over the
moments following it. Yet although the story of Eve’s birth is treated by the poem as
fundamentally about Adam, I argue that Eve’s own autobiography illustrates her
queerness. She says,
That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked and found myself reposed
Under a shade of flowers, much wondering where
And what I was, whence thither brought and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave and spread
Into a liquid plain… (4.449-455)
This is an incredibly loaded passage, and as it is the reader’s first view into Eve’s
mentality, it reveals a quite a bit about how her characterization will unfold as the poem
progresses. Milton’s descriptions of Eden throughout the poem are languid and flowery,
but this quotation in particular is notably feminine, such as in the “shade of flowers”
under which Eve first awakes. The lake almost seems to seduce Eve, murmuring to her as
a “liquid plain” emerges from a cave, imagery evocative of female genitalia. This lake is
neither babbling nor loud; instead, it gently murmurs to Eve, giving it a gentle and almost
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delicate tone, and ultimately imbuing it with a sense of female sensuality. Its description
as a “liquid plain” is also soft and feminine, as the “L’s” roll off of one’s tongue, aurally
evoking the murmuring, seductive lake. A sense of feminine sexuality pervades Eve’s
entire speech from lines 449 to 466, and the above quotation is only the first seven lines.
Eve continues her description of the lake,
...then stood unmoved
Pure as the expanse of Heaven; I thither went
With unexperienced thought and laid me down
On the green bank to look into the clear
Smooth lake that to me seemed another sky. (4.455-460)
Based off of Eve’s description, one cannot help but see why she was so drawn to the lake.
She describes it as simultaneously pure and expansive, smooth and sky-like. Eve
describes the lake not just as pure, but “Pure as the expanse of Heaven,” making the
lake’s sensuous femininity seem almost heavenly ordained. The lake is both awesome
and seductive, drawing Eve to lie down next to it and gaze into it, as if she is gazing into
a lover’s eyes. Later in the poem Adam and Eve’s sex scenes are tied to the natural world
of Paradise, so it is a pointed connection that Eve’s queer self-desire is also indelibly
linked to the natural mirror in which she sees herself. Additionally, Mandy Green points
out in Milton’s Ovidian Eve, “A number of critics have commented on the “womb-like”
nature of this environment in which Eve, as yet speechless, finds it difficult to distinguish
between her self and the world outside herself” (29). As I have discussed in previous
chapters, the word “womb” and its synonyms within the poem are incredibly loaded, so
the fact that Eve’s lake is another landscape in the poem with reproductive imagery is
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notable. Yet as critics have pointed out, the scene between Eve and her reflection is not
one of reproduction, but as Green puts it, it is one of “sterile recursion” (31). However, I
argue that what is important about this scene and the lake is not their lack of reproductive
possibilities, but their pervading femininity. Wombs hold the possibility to create anew,
but in the poem they are also sexually charged, making this scene all the more queer and
feminine.
It is in the following lines where I argue the poem gets truly queer, and apart
from the angel sex scene later in the poem, I argue that these lines are the only other
instance of explicit queer sexual desire. Eve says,
As I bent down to look, just opposite,
A shape within the watery gleam appeared,
Bending to look at me; I started back;
It started back. But pleased I soon returned;
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love. There I had fixed
Mine eyes till now and pined with vain desire… (4.461-466)
The language leading up to this section is incredibly sensual, so it seems only fitting that
Eve would also feel desire for whatever or whomever she sees in the seductive lake. But
what makes this desire most interesting is that it is not only Eve’s own reflection, but also
that it is her own feminine reflection. It would be easy to argue that this scene of Eve’s
narcissism is indicative that she is doomed to fall from the start, but Milton’s use of
beautiful and even romantic language suggests otherwise. Sin’s scenes of rape and incest,
which the poem clearly posits as sinful, are depicted using violent language, clearly
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contrasting with the sensuous language used in this passage. Immediately following these
lines God chastises Eve and leads her back to Adam, but the fact that the mother of the
human race’s first romantic desire is for a woman complicates the seemingly normative
nature of the poem. Up until this point, I have discussed the queerness in the poem not in
terms of same-sex desire, but in terms of non-normative reproduction and Milton’s use of
queered language. However in this passage, I argue that Eve’s, the supposedly
heterosexual mother of all mankind, first sexual desire is not for Adam but for a woman
in a lake, whom only later she realizes is herself. Eve is not attracted to the lake and to
this reflection because she sees herself in it, but because she sees a beautiful woman
staring at her with “looks / Of sympathy and love.” It is not until God intervenes that Eve
believes that this desire is “vain,” so while this scene is indeed one of narcissism, I argue
that more importantly it is one of Eve’s queer desire.
Even though Eve is gazing lovingly at her own visage in this passage, what draws
her to the reflection is not necessarily its physical beauty, but the “sympathy and love”
with which it looks at her. As I discussed in the previous chapter on Sin, the appearance
of women in the poem is important to their characterization, and Eve’s appearance is no
exception. Yet in Eve’s case, it is she who describes the appearance of the reflection to
Adam, and even after God tells her that it is her own reflection and sends her back on her
way to Adam, Eve prefers her own intrinsically feminine beauty to Adam’s. She says,
Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall,
Under a platan, yet methought less fair,
Less winning soft, less amiably mild,
Than that smooth watery image; back I turned;
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Thou, following, cried’st aloud, “Return, fair Eve...” (4.477-481)
Even after God tells her in the preceding lines that what she desires is her own reflection,
when Eve sees Adam and his physical appearance does not hold up to her reflection’s,
she tries to flee. What is intriguing about these lines is not only that Eve has no qualms
with telling Adam that she once preferred her own reflection to him, but also the feminine
language that pervades it, such as in the lake scene. Eve describes her reflection as
“winning soft,” “amiably mild,” and also more fair than Adam. Eve merely describes
Adam as “fair indeed and tall,” devoting far more time here and in earlier lines to
describe the feminine beauty of the woman in the water. Soft and mild call to mind
images of femininity and womanhood, illustrating that Eve prefers her reflection to Adam
not only because it is fairer, but specifically because it is feminine.
It is only ever the other characters in the poem who use the word “fair” to
describe Eve’s appearance, for in these lines Eve uses the word “fair” in reference to
Adam and uses it to compare him to her reflection, yet in the final line of this quotation it
is Adam who refers to her as “fair Eve,” and in a passage I will discuss shortly God calls
Eve a “fair creature.” These descriptions parallel Sin’s description of herself in Heaven as
“heavenly fair” in an interesting way. The poem contrasts Sin’s “fair” appearance in
Heaven with her monstrous appearance in Hell, and both Sin and Satan valued her in
Heaven solely because of her fair likeness to Satan. Yet Eve desires her reflection not
because it is fair, or even because it looks like her, but because it is soft, mild,
sympathetic, and loving, all attributes that are inherently feminine. While Sin is the result
of Satan’s narcissistic self-desire, Eve’s queer desires are portrayed in a more appealing
way. Ultimately, I argue that these lines illustrate Eve’s queerness; even though later in
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the poem she goes on to have a lot of sex with a man and eventually becomes the mother
of the human race, the fact remains that Eve’s first instance of romantic and sexual desire
is for a woman, whom she only later learns is herself. In a poem that values male
characters over female ones, Eve valuing femininity over masculinity is an act of
transgression.
God and Adam treat Eve’s desire for her reflection as an ignorant, childish
mistake on Eve’s part, but viewing this scene as one not of narcissism but of queerness
sheds new light on God and Adam’s responses, and the way that they correct and redirect
her queer desire. Eve tells Adam,
Had not a voice thus warned me: “What thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself;
With thee it came and goes; but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays
Thy coming and thy soft embraces; he
Whose image thou art, him thou shalt enjoy
Inseparably thine, to him shalt bear
Multitudes like thyself and thence be called
“Mother of human race.” (4.467-475)
Here, God refers to Eve as a “fair creature,” at once patronizing her by calling her a
creature and reprimanding her for her apparent vanity. It is important to note that Eve’s
retelling of the lake scene historically occurs after these lines, so her reference to her
“vain desire” earlier can be seen a result of God’s reprimand, for one can argue that while
initially feeling the desire there was no way for her to know that it was vain. As I have
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argued, it is only other characters in the poem who refer to Eve as fair, and instead she
refers to her reflection using specifically feminine language. This passage illustrates how
the poem and its characters shame Eve for her queer self-desire; it is only after God
intercedes that Eve comes to understand that her sexual desire for the woman in the lake
is wrong. Yet the poem, and Eve herself, do not treat Eve’s self-desire as a transgression
against her husband or God, but instead as a silly mistake that God quickly rectifies.
Viewing this scene not through a narcissistic lens but a queer one problematizes it even
further. I argue that this is a scene of very real queer desire, yet neither the poem nor its
critics view it that way, focusing instead on the narcissism. Eve is a very sexual and
sexualized character, so it is paradoxical that this scene is not viewed in a sexual or
romantic way.
What is also interesting in this quotation is that God convinces Eve to go back to
Adam by telling her that she is of his image, which is particularly interesting considering
that he immediately admonished her for desiring her own image. This passage evokes the
complicated ways that the poem treats external reflections of oneself. Both Eve and Sin
are born from the bodies of their sexual partners, but Eve and Adam are clearly treated as
husband and wife, while Sin and Satan are daughter and father, and their relationship is
inherently incestuous while Adam and Eve’s is heavenly ordained.
These lines reveal the disparity between how Eve sees herself, even after God
admonishes her, and how Adam and God see her. Although God has led Eve in the
correct direction of Adam, her desire for womanly traits remains, revealing her
transgressive potential as a character. Christine Froula writes in “When Eve Reads
Milton: Undoing the Canonical Economy,” “In the space between, however, Eve
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remembers an origin innocent of patriarchal indoctrination, one whose resonances the
covering trope of narcissism does not entirely suffice to control” (327). Eve ultimately
goes back to Adam and does indeed become the mother of the human race as God
ordains, but the fact that in spite of this she still prefers her own feminine qualities to
Adam’s masculine ones illustrates that even under the paternalistic paradigm of the
poem, one cannot deny that Eve’s first experience of romantic desire is for a woman, a
fact which is in itself radical. Additionally, as Minaz Jooma writes in “The Alimentary
Structures of Incest in Paradise Lost,”
Because the divine voice gives Eve in response to Adam’s desire, it must also
construct Eve’s desire as responsive to his – Eve’s desire is actually precluded.
Expressly designed to sate Adam’s desire, Eve cannot but respond. Thus Adam’s
contract with his creator propels Eve into a situation of indebtedness to her
creator. (35)
This quotation is even more resonant when viewed in reference to the lake scene; while
Eve’s desire for Adam is supposed to be designed in her very nature, the lake scene
reveals that before the male influences of God and Adam, Eve has the innate ability to
feel desire not for Adam but for a woman. In the next section I will discuss sex between
Adam and Eve, but I would like to finish my discussion of Eve’s queerness by asserting
that the fact that she does return to Adam and have sex with him does not erase her
queerness. If anything, her queer desire complicates her sexual relationship with Adam,
and as Jooma posits, Eve’s initial desire for a woman complicates her sexual
“indebtedness” to Adam.
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IV. EVE AND ADAM
Intriguingly, Adam and Eve’s first sex scene immediately follows Eve telling Adam how
much she prefers her own image to his. Yet in spite of Eve’s apparent queerness, she
instigates their first sexual encounter of the poem. Milton writes,
So spake our general mother, and, with eyes
Of conjugal attraction unreproved
And meek surrender, half embracing leaned
On our first father; half her swelling breast
Naked met his, under the flowing gold
Of her loose tresses hid. He in delight
Both of her beauty and submissive charms
Smiled with superior love, as Jupiter
On Juno smiles when he impregns the clouds
That shed May flowers, and pressed her matron lip
With kisses pure. (4.492-502)
This scene directly contrasts the lake scene, where Eve and her reflection stare into each
other’s eyes as equals. Instead here, Eve gives herself to Adam “with meek surrender,”
and Adam even desires her because of her “beauty and submissive charms.” This sex
scene quite explicitly illustrates the disparity between Adam and Eve; it even says that he
smiles at her “with superior love.” As beautifully as this scene is written, one cannot help
but feel that it illustrates Adam’s conquest of Eve through sex. Eve’s first instinct after
her birth is to stare lovingly into the eyes of a woman for all eternity, but she is quickly
corrected first by God and then by Adam, and the fact that these admonishments are
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immediately followed by Adam and Eve’s sex scene reveals how the poem uses sex
against women. Sin is punished for desiring and having sex with Satan through Death’s
birth, and here sex is used as a corrective measure to transform Eve from a transgressive
queer into Adam’s wife, and humankind’s mother. Both Sin and Eve are punished for
transgressing against God through sex and childbirth, but in Eve’s case her punishment is
dealt through flowery language.
Eve’s appearance is an important facet of her treatment in the poem, and this line
perfectly encapsulates what both Adam and the narrative desire from Eve– her beauty
and her submission. This Eve is a far cry from the one whom she described staring at her
reflection with vain desire. The poem codes Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian sexual desire
for each other as good, and all other sexual desire, from Eve’s desire for her own
reflection to Satan’s narcissistic self-love through Sin, as bad. Yet the parallels between
Adam and Eve and Satan and Sin complicate this binary of good versus bad sexual
relationships. Milton regularly refers to Eve as “our general mother,” as in line 492 from
Book 4, or “mother of all mankind,” constantly reminding the reader that this pure,
beautiful, and ultimately submissive creature is Our Mother. But the fact that Milton
parallels her to Satan from her birth ensures that regardless of her innocent behavior in
this quotation, Eve is fallen from the start and is ultimately incapable of being the
submissive wife and mother that God and Adam so want her to be.
V. EVE’S “RUIN”
Even though the poem treats Eve as The Mother, she is sexualized throughout most of her
appearances. Eve and Sin have sex throughout the poem, consensual and otherwise, and
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their bodies are sexualized. At the start of the poem Eve at least has some semblance of
agency when she retells the lake story, but in her sex scenes with Adam her submission to
him is sexualized. But the point in the poem where Satan pursues Eve and convinces her
to fall is the most troubling, for his seduction of her is sexualized using the language of
rape. Milton writes,
Such pleasure took the serpent to behold
This flowery pot, this sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone, her heavenly form
Angelic, more soft and feminine
Her graceful innocence. Her every air
Of gesture of least action overawed
His malice and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought. (9.455-462)
Eve’s “sweet recess” and her “flowery pot” are quite obvious references to her vulva.
Milton also refers to Sin’s reproductive organs using vague language such as of her
“nether shape,” yet although Sin’s body is monstrous in comparison to Eve’s, somehow
this description of Eve is far more chilling than that of Sin. “Her heavenly form” is also
reminiscent of Sin describing herself in Heaven as “heavenly fair,” yet in Eve’s case the
focus is specifically on her body, and the description is coming from the point of view of
a voyeuristic predator, not from her own as in Sin’s case. She is also described here as
“soft and feminine,” paralleling Eve’s description of her reflection as soft and mild.
Evidently the last two lines reveal that all these sexualized qualities of Eve make Satan
question his purpose, but the fact that it took her sexualized submission and femininity to
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make Satan waver is troubling. Sin is sexualized to denigrate her character and Eve is
sexualized to augment hers.
Before approaching Eve, Satan says, “The way which to her ruin now I tend”
(9.493). One of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of ruin is “dishonor of a
woman caused by her seduction and subsequent abandonment; degradation resulting from
this.” Milton’s specific use of the word ruin further imbues Eve’s fall with connotations
of rape. When Satan actually seduces Eve into eating the fruit he is complimentary, but
not sexual, calling her “A goddess among gods,” “Empress of this fair world, resplendent
Eve,” (9.548, 5568). But the fact that Satan does not actually seduce Eve into falling, yet
all of the language surrounding it is incredibly sexual, further illustrates how the poem
reduces its women to sexual objects.
VI. EVE AND SIN
Throughout this chapter, there has undoubtedly been an undercurrent of comparison
between Sin and Eve, for even though the poem posits them as opposites, their shared
gender and paralleled experiences illustrate that a discussion of Eve cannot help but also
be a discussion of Sin. Yet in this section, I would like to discuss the two of them more
explicitly, and detail how the way that their characters are crafted in tandem with each
other challenges and creates a sense of womanhood in the poem.
What is notable about the poem is the autonomy the characters have in their birth
stories; Adam, Eve, and Sin all recount the tales of their births to other characters and
ultimately to the reader. Both Eve and Sin tell their birth stories to their father/lovers, Sin
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to urge her father not to kill their incestuous offspring, and Eve to cement her devotion to
Adam, at least according to Hillier. He writes,
In the formal mirror patterning of her lyric [4.635-58] Eve corrects her formerly
lukewarm interest in Adam and moderates the quasi-narcissistic absorption she
displays shortly after her creation on first beholding her own reflection during her
first moments of waking consciousness (440-91) …. Even Eve’s experience of
awakening by the pool and laying eyes upon her reflection is an opening move to
her attainment of a full awareness of what presence and absence mean to her, a
concept Eve goes on to explore in her mirror poem when she imagines the
possibility of Adam’s absence and its effects… (3)
Hillier goes on to quote lines 460-65 from the lake scene in book four. I disagree that in
her retelling of the lake scene Eve “imagines the possibility of Adam’s absence and its
effects.” What is so striking about the lines from Book 4 is their absence of Adam; even
though Adam is Eve’s audience, he and his masculinity are strikingly absent from Eve’s
speech. Additionally, the fact that both God and Adam are needed to draw her back to
Adam, and the fact that Eve tells all of this to him, reveals that Eve’s speech is not quite
as corrective as Hillier asserts. Eve is immediately born into Adam’s absence, and it is
only through God and Adam’s correction that she learns that Adam’s existence is
apparently so intrinsic to her own. I argue that if Eve’s birth reveals anything about other
characters of the poem, it would be Sin. Murphy writes,
Through its representation of a self-encounter, Eve’s birth unfolds what Sin’s
narration conflates. Though Eve’s moment at the pool mirrors Satan’s amorous
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recognition of himself in Sin, her moment serves to open up a space within the
self, rather than denying the space between the self and another. (38)
Although as I have argued Sin is a character of her own, I cannot deny that her existence
is tied up in Satan’s narcissism, which differs from Eve’s. Sin’s birth and her resulting
coupling with Satan illustrate Satan’s “perverse self-love,” as Forsyth puts it, while as
Murphy argues Eve’s “serves to open up a space within the self.” Eve’s birth is about
herself, and about the potential for her own queer desires. And although Satan and Eve
share their self-love, what differentiates them is that Satan forcibly enacts his self-love on
his feminine reflection, while Eve is content to just lovingly stare into the eyes of her
own. Satan’s self-desire is simultaneously procreative and destructive, for it results in
both the birth of Sin and the violent ravaging of her body. Eve’s self-desire never gets the
chance to be procreative, for God redirects her sexual desire to Adam, with whom she
will eventually create the rest of humanity. Eve, Satan, and Sin are all tangled together by
Eve and Satan’s shared self-love and Eve and Sin’s shared gender, complicating Milton’s
treatment of Eve as mother of mankind.
Milton’s parallels between Eve and Satan and Eve and Sin complicate Eve’s
position of “mother of human race,” for although Eve’s body is not destroyed in the way
that Sin’s is, the parallels between the two of them are undeniable. Van den Berg writes
in “Eve, Sin, and Witchcraft in Paradise Lost,”
The learned debates that swirled around accused witches in courtrooms and tracts
are crucial to Milton’s account of Eve’s dream in Books 4 and 5. He borrows the
language of the theological treatises and judicial proceedings that probed the
moral and ontological status of imagination. All these allusions are constructed to
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establish a contrast between Eve and witches that is ultimately based on a fantasy
of woman not as seductress but as mother. (351)
Although Eve engages in sex and feels sexual desire quite often in the poem, she is never
exactly a “seductress,” for even the lake is the one who does the seducing. Although I
won’t delve into van den Berg’s argument specifically in reference to witches, this
quotation remains important to my own treatment of Eve and Sin. However I argue that
in the poem there is not a simple binary between Eve and Sin/witches, but instead in spite
of their differences Eve and Sin are quite similar. Eve goes through a number of
transformations in the poem, from a queer and confused newborn, to “mother of human
race,” to the fallen woman who dooms her spouse as well, and finally returning to her
rightful place as mother of the human race.
It is evident from the differing natures of Eve and Sin’s motherhood that the poem
is attempting to create a contrast between the two of them, with Eve as the “good” mother
and Sin as the sinful one, but their shared sexualized treatment as women brings them
together more than it separates them. In “The Sources of Milton’s Sin Reconsidered,”
Catherine Gimelli Martin argues,
More particularly, it also usefully illuminates how and why Eve is not like Sin,
despite some superficial similarities too often mistaken for identities …. Thus
while both Sin and Eve apparently possess wifely “attractive graces” (PL 2.762,
298), their real differences are revealed as the inevitable barrenness that Sin
shares with her “undeliverable” progeny causes a curse, not a blessing, to fall on
her seed. (5)
61
While it is true that Sin’s scenes of reproduction are in fact scenes of cannibalism and
that after returning to Adam Eve is able to have a procreative relationship, I argue that
these differences do not mean that Sin and Eve are ultimately different. While as Martin
argues and as I illustrated in Chapter 2 the poem treats Eve as a mother and Sin as a
monster, their shared gender and the way their bodies are sexualized and reduced to their
reproductive abilities reveals that discussing their similarities is just as fruitful as arguing
about their differences.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
I have spent a lot of time here arguing that queerness exists in Paradise Lost, so I would
like to finish this thesis by discussing why I feel that such a task is important. The field of
literature criticism has long been one that, like Paradise Lost, conforms to
heteropatriarchal ideals and excludes racial, sexual, and gender minorities. This is why
bringing queer theory into literature criticism is so important; even in a text as
heterosexual and sexist as Paradise Lost, one can find queerness, and so too can one
bring queer theory into the preexisting critical tradition. Modern queer critics have been
hesitant to view Paradise Lost from a queer perspective because on the surface, it is an
extremely straight story about the quintessentially heterosexual couple Adam and Eve.
Yet as I have illustrated, using queer theory for even such a seemingly straight text as this
has yielded new insights while building off of preexisting ones.
62
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